West Virginia Republican state Sen. Robert Karnes felt pretty confident about opposing the longest teachers strike in the state’s history.
A longtime opponent of the state’s teachers unions, he told a local newspaper that he wasn’t worried about any political ramifications of the strike. “I can’t say that it will have zero effect, but I don’t think it’ll have any significant effect because, more often than not, they probably weren’t voting on the Republican side of the aisle anyways,” he said of the state’s teachers.
Essentially, Karnes bet against his constituents’ interest in education funding. And they called him on it.
Karnes lost his May primary election, winning only 3,749 votes compared to Republican Del. Bill Hamilton’s 5,787 votes. Hamilton was an opponent of right-to-work laws and expressed sympathy for the teachers strike. He secured the support of labor groups like the West Virginia AFL-CIO and the West Virginia Education Association Political Action Committee; altogether, organized labor contributed around $10,000 to his campaign.